Contracts are just the tip of the iceberg since (apparently) there is a scripting language built right into Bitcoin that allows for more complex financial transactions. Here's a pretty great article on how Bitcoin works and the following post will focus on scripting: http://www.michaelnielsen.org/ddi/how-the-bitcoin-protocol-actually-works/

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Script

but don't worry, the trolls have clearly demonstrated that this is all a house of cards and will collapse very soon

12/9/2013 7:49:32 AM

Right. So trading in eventual derivatives of an unstable commodity is going to somehow be better than trading in the unstable commodity itself.


You guys really have NO CLUE how markets or money works, do you?

12/9/2013 8:13:05 AM

Quote :

"You guys really have NO CLUE how markets or money works, do you?"

Well, I certainly have no clue what you're talking about here:

Quote :

"eventual derivatives"

Did one of us mention derivatives?

12/9/2013 8:38:57 AM

So you're not going to comment on the utility of bitcoin? Just that some people speculate and don't know how markets work.

Keep using Paypal and waiting 3 weeks for your money.

[Edited on December 9, 2013 at 9:32 AM. Reason : A]

12/9/2013 9:32:03 AM

I just bought several humble jumbo bundles with bitcoin. I'm not going to be rich off bitcoin, but I now almost immediately dismiss someone who says its worthless and stupid.

12/9/2013 1:03:33 PM

^ I bought some stuff from adafruit and put.io subscription. I love not having to store credit information somewhere it could be taken.

12/9/2013 1:44:36 PM

LOL

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2013/12/18/bitcoin-price/4107831/

12/18/2013 9:11:11 AM

Third time it's happened. Not at all surprising.

12/18/2013 10:52:04 AM

I'm ruined. Why didn't anyone warn me? The government needs to step in and regulate bitcoin or shut it down. I've already contacted my representatives. I don't want what happened to me to happen to anyone else.

12/18/2013 12:17:18 PM

good thing I sold all my bitcoins to shoot

12/18/2013 2:11:41 PM

ehe. China won't legally recognize Bitcoin, because it has no legal status. wait, what?

12/18/2013 11:09:59 PM

it's just a con to get people to voluntarily contribute their computing resources to a big ole cryptonet.

highly unlikely to be being used for anything good for us.

stop being a sucker and follow this rule: if what you're doing doesn't actually generate wealth/value in some way, then you're a bad person. even if you are successful, if you didn't CREATE the wealth, then you basically just stole it.

this shit was figured out thousands of years ago. read your greek philosophers.

12/19/2013 4:00:26 AM

Bitcoin made an appearance in "Almost Human" this week.

12/19/2013 8:31:48 AM

Quote :

"highly unlikely to be being used for anything good for us."

Target just leaked 40,000,000 credit cards. If they were bitcoin payments it wouldn't have mattered--that's the biggest draw of bitcoin.

12/19/2013 9:16:31 AM

Quote :

"Target just leaked 40,000,000 credit cards. If they were bitcoin payments it wouldn't have mattered--that's the biggest draw of bitcoin."

If they were bitcoins and they were stolen there would be no way to reverse the charges or track the transactions to find the people responsible. If they were bitcoins Target would be bankrupt.

12/19/2013 4:21:58 PM

what a horrible comparison - they didn't steal money - the stole the transaction data...the credit card number is needed as a part of transaction data

12/19/2013 4:46:22 PM

Quote :

"they didn't steal money - the stole the transaction data...the credit card number is needed as a part of transaction data"

Well with a bitcoin you have to store the actual coin not just make an account transfer. Look at it this way, the worst that can be stolen from target with credit card transactions is your credit card number, the worst that can be stolen from target with bitcoins is everything they own.

12/19/2013 11:46:08 PM

^

False. Each register could have a wallet stored completely offline. You only need the public address to send money. The private one can be hidden completely offline. Corporate could assign an address to every store, employee or shift. Makes doing accounting super easy, especially if items sold are encoded with the transaction data.

Automatic auditing.

12/20/2013 12:33:06 AM

Quote :

"The private one can be hidden completely offline."

And still easily stolen.

12/20/2013 8:47:02 AM

In the same way a bank can easily have the vault raided--I can think of a hundred ways to lower or eliminate the risk. Only if they are dense would a major theft happen and it puts the merchant at risk instead of millions of consumers.

12/20/2013 9:28:06 AM

Quote :

"In the same way a bank can easily have the vault raided"

Define easily. One could steal bitcoins without leaving the house. One would have to physically go to a vault, break into it, load up and transport that large amount of money and manage to get out without any alarms being set off and without leaving any physical evidence and manage to launder all the money again without getting caught.

Quote :

"it puts the merchant at risk instead of millions of consumers."

No, they're still at risk in the same way, if not even at a much higher level of risk, and of course if their money is stolen there is almost no way to get it back or find out who did it.

12/20/2013 1:37:18 PM

Quote :

"Define easily. One could steal bitcoins without leaving the house. One would have to physically go to a vault, break into it, load up and transport that large amount of money and manage to get out without any alarms being set off and without leaving any physical evidence and manage to launder all the money again without getting caught."

False. You can take a wallet.dat, print out the encoded private key, and store it into a safe deposit box. You can send bitcoins to that wallet without anything being online. The only way to spend them is to go to the safe deposit box and put the private key back into a bitcoin client. You can verify bitcoins are sent to a particular public key without a bitcoin client, if your a merchant and want the bitcoins in a safe place but still want to receive payments. You could do this on a per store basis, per employee basis, or per company basis--and as I mentioned earlier you could create a whole automated accounting system on top of it. Wallets and public addresses without wallets can be created at will with any amount. The bitcoin transaction log is public, so laundering them is next to impossible. A sophisticated computer setup could easily track down what all of them are and put markers on the "tainted ones". The tin foil hat crowd believes the untraceable aspects, but bitcoins are in many ways more traceable unless the user takes some pretty serious precautions.

Quote :

"No, they're still at risk in the same way, if not even at a much higher level of risk, and of course if their money is stolen there is almost no way to get it back or find out who did it."

It changes the rewards for a hack. A single user is a terrible target because it's high risk/low reward. The way it is now, if you score a successful hack with a larger company you may get many possible credit cards and use of the credit card data for a while before they figure out where the security hole was.

[Edited on December 20, 2013 at 3:27 PM. Reason : a]

12/20/2013 3:26:36 PM

So since the price has come down to half of the peak value, is it time to buy them now? I want to become a millionaire like that Norwegian dude.

12/20/2013 3:30:09 PM

Quote :

"You can take a wallet.dat, print out the encoded private key, and store it into a safe deposit box."

Ok, why wouldn't I just steal that wallet.dat file? You don't think deleting a file on a computer actually deletes it do you? or that once things are online they can be taken offline?

Quote :

"A sophisticated computer setup could easily track down what all of them are and put markers on the "tainted ones". "

Then what?

Quote :

"A single user is a terrible target because it's high risk/low reward."

I'm failing to see the risk. There have been several large and small bitcoin thefts and I am aware of no one caught or any of those bitcoins returned.

Quote :

"The way it is now, if you score a successful hack with a larger company you may get many possible credit cards and use of the credit card data for a while before they figure out where the security hole was."

Seems like that is a very low reward and high risk, especially compared to a robbery where you get liquid money.

[Edited on December 20, 2013 at 3:48 PM. Reason : ]

12/20/2013 3:46:59 PM

Quote :

"Ok, why wouldn't I just steal that wallet.dat file? You don't think deleting a file on a computer actually deletes it do you? or that once things are online they can be taken offline?"

Because most people are small targets and it's a lot of work. You don't think someone setting up a system to secure a wallet for a mega corporation would be that stupid do you? Also, again it's up to the company to be as secure as you want. You can do things like distribute the wallets to individual stores and close out the accounts at the end of the day.

Quote :

"I'm failing to see the risk. There have been several large and small bitcoin thefts and I am aware of no one caught or any of those bitcoins returned."

These are very unsophisticated 3rd party companies that have all their bitcoins in one spot. If a billionaire kept $1 million in USD at their home and it was stolen you wouldn't damn the USD would you? There have not been any thefts with Coinbase, because they are following the best practices of the community and have security specialists with Ivy League educations and tons of industry experience. There are tons of ways to reduce the risk, but you keep handwaving what I'm saying because you don't understand how it works, or you are trolling. This whole point of securing it yourself is ignorant anyway because there are several companies you can use to manage all that for you, even ones that immediately convert to the native currency--then you don't have to worry about securing it yourself.

Quote :

"Seems like that is a very low reward and high risk, especially compared to a robbery where you get liquid money."

As a consumer I care more that once I've spent $10 buying nudie magazines, some jack hole can't charge $1000 with my card, which could cause my daily spending limit to hit or decline my card. As a reasonable person I have spending money accessible in small amounts on my computer and the large amounts locked up.

http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2013/12/12/andreessen-boosts-bitcoins-legitimacy/

Quote :

"“Bitcoin is the first plausible proposal for an economic protocol for the Internet,” Andreessen investor Chris Dixon, who is joining Coinbase’s board, wrote in a blog post Thursday. “It fixes serious problems with existing payment systems that depend on centralized services to verify the validity of transactions. These services are both expensive (roughly a 2.5% tax on all transactions) and prone to failure (Internet payment fraud is rampant).”"

[Edited on December 20, 2013 at 4:50 PM. Reason : a]

12/20/2013 4:44:43 PM

Quote :

"ecause most people are small targets and it's a lot of work"

It's not that much work to make some malware that scans a persons computer and steals their bitcoins, and it hits a ton of small targets.

Quote :

"If a billionaire kept $1 million in USD at their home and it was stolen you wouldn't damn the USD would you? "

He could track and find his money.

Quote :

"There have not been any thefts with Coinbase, because they are following the best practices of the community and have security specialists with Ivy League educations and tons of industry experience."

And because no one gives a shit. They're too busy hacking Target.

Quote :

"As a consumer I care more that once I've spent $10 buying nudie magazines, some jack hole can't charge $1000 with my card, which could cause my daily spending limit to hit or decline my card."

Chances are your credit card would catch that suspicious activity, but if they don't, you can get your money back with one phone call, with bitcoin you could never get it back.

12/20/2013 6:07:44 PM

c'mon Kris why cantcha be a true Bitcoin Believer™

12/20/2013 8:41:17 PM

I've never said it could remove the USD as the world's reserve currency. I've used it to make purchases and found it was more convenient and lower friction than credit card. I think multiparty transactions and digital signatures with wallets are also compelling. I'll go out on a limb and say it will be a major player in international commerce or the current banking system will change in such a way to usurp the good parts of it.

If I was alone Andresson wouldn't have just given Coinbase $85 million.

[Edited on December 20, 2013 at 9:03 PM. Reason : A]

12/20/2013 9:03:14 PM

there are many many other new-millennium gold-bugs like you

and criminals eager for new ways to transfer their ill-gotten gains

and parasites eager to feed off the ignorance of the first two types

[Edited on December 20, 2013 at 9:41 PM. Reason : also idiots who get sucked into the hype

12/20/2013 9:40:34 PM

Quote :

"If I was alone Andresson wouldn't have just given Coinbase $85 million."

They didn't. They gave them $25 million.

Or did they give them $85 million worth of Bitcoins only to watch the currency crash?

Also all this talk of bank robbers is making me think the FDIC is pretty cool. They got that for Bitcoin, right?

[Edited on December 20, 2013 at 9:47 PM. Reason : .]

12/20/2013 9:44:42 PM

Ok. Even though I've gone on and on about its legitimate uses.

12/20/2013 9:47:07 PM

God damn, it's hilarious to see you going on about stuff you have no concept about.

12/21/2013 11:49:22 AM

What specifically? It's clear Kris doesn't know how it works technically or practically. The number of bitcoin businesses has skyrocketed from 3 years ago and VCs are interested. It's not all just speculation.

[Edited on December 21, 2013 at 12:14 PM. Reason : A]

12/21/2013 12:10:29 PM

Never did address this from EuroTitToss:

Quote :

"Did one of us mention derivatives?"

what in the fuck do you think

Quote :

"Contracts are just the tip of the iceberg since (apparently) there is a scripting language built right into Bitcoin that allows for more complex financial transactions."

means?

Again:

Quote :

"You guys really have NO CLUE how markets or money works, do you?"

To you, CaelNCSU:

Let me preface this by saying that I have a unique perspective. I work for an IB and I've been lead designer on software that touched Foreign exchange, fixed income (debt sales, bonds and shit), middle office functions (bookkeeping and risk analysis), and transaction banking (moving money from one account to another domestically and internationally). Every single one of these things has a complex workflow that increases accountability. You can take that for what you want. I won't claim to know every nuanced detail about banking and the world of finance, but I doubt that there's anyone on TWW who has a better grasp of the 'full banking picture' than I do.

To start, the first very obvious problem is lack of the ability to charge back. You tout this as some sort of technology success, but I can tell you firsthand that there is no technology, especially in finance, that can account for human error. There are several layers of manual interface built in to the software that banks use to move money because of this very fact. People fat-finger and fuck up transfers ALL THE TIME. Transfers that get completed successfully and need to be called back because they went to the wrong account, the wrong bank branch, the wrong person.

Bitcoin glosses over this by trying to offload the multi-eye principles built into regulated banking environments onto software that doesn't give a shit, and removes any accountability from the process altogether. To take that ability to do a chargeback away from the initiator is setting up your entire system for failure due to lack of trust from the institutional class.

Further, Bitcoin builds this false perception of 'unbreakability' that simply cannot be true. Just because it has some layer of encryption doesn't mean that it won't be broken at some point, if it hasn't already been. Encryption alone doesn't cut it. Meanwhile, Central Banks and their regulations are virtually theft-proof because of the added layers of security and human interaction. The whole movie scenario of breaking in to a bank and moving money from one account to another could NEVER happen because of the safeguards put in place. Meanwhile, it's happened several times already with Bitcoin Exchanges. That's hilarious in and of itself. Namely, because the people running these exchanges don't understand the concept of separating money (accounts) from markets and the Front/Middle/Back office organization that every large Investment Bank has in some form or fashion.

Quote :

"The number of bitcoin businesses has skyrocketed from 3 years ago and VCs are interested. It's not all just speculation."

Assuming that just because a guy at a venture capital firm threw some money at a Bitcoin-based startup means that Bitcoin itself is somehow now credible eschews the very concept of venture capitalism. These guys make money by placing bets on things. You should think about that for a second, and consider that there is with 100% CERTAINTY a hedging strategy on the other side of Andreessen-Horowitz's bet on Coinbase. All this means is that AH felt comfortable enough with their risk calculations to put in a 25 million bet. 25 million is nothing to them. By comparison, AH put 15 million into RapGenius. Ever heard of that site? Neither had I before I googled the right way to spell 'Andreessen.'

You say this:

Quote :

"I've used it to make purchases and found it was more convenient and lower friction than credit card."

without substantiating beyond giving me anecdotal evidence. Given what I know about transactional banking, I find it hard to believe that at scale this would even remotely be true for most people.

To be completely fair, when BTC dropped the other day, I bought half of one, just to see what the fuss was. I used Coinbase. It was relatively painless. That's really about the only positive thing I have to say about it. Over the past few days I've seen the price of BTC jump from $554 USD to ~$720 USD, and as I post this I see it hovering around $604 USD.

That kind of volatility makes it a non-starter for any merchant who doesn't convert it over to cash immediately. Could you imagine an Apple or an HP not trusting a currency in a foreign country to hold its value enough that they'd need to do currency spot trades immediately after any transaction in order to avoid losing money? Their profit margins are too tight, and that's not a practical use of any merchant or manufacturer's time. The same problems would arise if they sat on everything and booked a future swap - no telling that they're going to get even remotely close to what they put in back.

So anyway, sorry for the blog post, but the 'legitimate' uses you talk about don't offer any real value for the smaller scale users over cash or credit card. At the larger scale, the inherent lack of accountability would send institutional users running for the hills.

The joke going around is that Bitcoin's alternate name should be Dunning-Krugerrands.

That's this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect + http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_rand

Pretty fucking apt, if you ask me.

[Edited on December 21, 2013 at 3:15 PM. Reason : tww is not a blog]

12/21/2013 3:11:15 PM

Quote :

"To start, the first very obvious problem is lack of the ability to charge back. You tout this as some sort of technology success, but I can tell you firsthand that there is no technology, especially in finance, that can account for human error. There are several layers of manual interface built in to the software that banks use to move money because of this very fact. People fat-finger and fuck up transfers ALL THE TIME. Transfers that get completed successfully and need to be called back because they went to the wrong account, the wrong bank branch, the wrong person."

Encode the price into a QR code so you aren't fat fingering anything? Deal with reputable companies that will give your money back. Most of the companies accepting them have some kind of system like this in place. They fat finger it because they use old terminal technology with awful user interfaces. I'll reiterate again that I don't see bitcoin as taking over global commerce. I see it as useful to make online purchases and as someone that recently had card info stolen at a gas station in rural Utah, I see that angle as compelling.

Quote :

" I work for an IB and I've been lead designer on software that touched Foreign exchange, fixed income (debt sales, bonds and shit), middle office functions (bookkeeping and risk analysis), and transaction banking (moving money from one account to another domestically and internationally)."

They offered me a job too, it's too bad I can't argue about this over shitty coffee.

Quote :

"Assuming that just because a guy at a venture capital firm threw some money at a Bitcoin-based startup means that Bitcoin itself is somehow now credible eschews the very concept of venture capitalism. These guys make money by placing bets on things. You should think about that for a second, and consider that there is with 100% CERTAINTY a hedging strategy on the other side of Andreessen-Horowitz's bet on Coinbase. All this means is that AH felt comfortable enough with their risk calculations to put in a 25 million bet. 25 million is nothing to them. By comparison, AH put 15 million into RapGenius. Ever heard of that site? Neither had I before I googled the right way to spell 'Andreessen.'"

I had heard of it because I raised a Series A of $5 million on a small team in SF and dealt with VC backed companies for the past 5 years of my career. Andreessen is known for being fairly conservative with a high success rate. If some dumb VC that you'd never heard of had raised money I wouldn't think it was as big a deal.

Quote :

"without substantiating beyond giving me anecdotal evidence. Given what I know about transactional banking, I find it hard to believe that at scale this would even remotely be true for most people."

The ease of order isn't as useful for Amazon where your information is likely to be stored in a secure way. It's lower friction if you only have to enter one shipping address and pay. This is opposed to registering with email, confirming, and setting up a billing and shipping address, and verifying all that matches the card. Why the fuck make customers do all that? Just create a public address, generated for that user's order and take the bitcoins. I don't know how Bitpay does it, but they are pretty big and convert to cash instantly for their merchants.

I'm trying to separate the gold bug talk and nutso people who think it's going to create a separate crypto state from the actual usefulness of it.

Disclaimer: I have made enough speculating to buy a car. My bitcoin holdings are super low as a percentage of my net worth.

Overstock is no Amazon and the gold talk is nuts, but:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/amitchowdhry/2013/12/21/overstock-com-is-going-to-accept-bitcoin-in-2014/

12/21/2013 3:51:19 PM

Just want to take a moment to point out that AH led a $25 million round which is different from investing $25 million.

Either way, AH has plenty of money to throw a flyer on a Bitcoin company.

[Edited on December 21, 2013 at 4:08 PM. Reason : .]

12/21/2013 4:08:28 PM

Don't get me wrong, I get your argument. You're saying that in your mind, Bitcoin is not meant to be a currency replacement, but a peer to peer payment replacement.

I don't deny that it is a very useful concept. But it's been done.

My point is that I don't agree that it's stable enough for that - and it will never get that stability without falling into a regulated state. I also don't think that it's credible enough for that, and if we ever get chip & pin here in the US, then it simply won't displace credit cards because of the infrastructure that's already in place (see google wallet).

Quote :

"The ease of order isn't as useful for Amazon where your information is likely to be stored in a secure way. It's lower friction if you only have to enter one shipping address and pay. This is opposed to registering with email, confirming, and setting up a billing and shipping address, and verifying all that matches the card. Why the fuck make customers do all that? Just create a public address, generated for that user's order and take the bitcoins. I don't know how Bitpay does it, but they are pretty big and convert to cash instantly for their merchants."

You're making an amalgamation of a couple of different UX issues here.

One has already been solved by Paypal for a lot of sites. Click "Pay by paypal" enter u/p, confirm payment account and shipping address, done. Exactly what your Bitpay thing does, I'd suspect.

The other is customer information gathering for whatever merchant. Some sites let you check out without registering, some require registration. I agree that UX pattern sucks, but it's a bit deceptive to mash them both up together and say that one exists because of the other.


BTW the coffee's gotten better.

12/21/2013 5:01:18 PM

Quote :

" I don't deny that it is a very useful concept. But it's been done. "

I'm not aware of other solutions to the distributed transaction verification problem. You can make bitcoin payments to fractions of a cent, microloans and payments that cost less than a penny are doable and profitable.

Quote :

" My point is that I don't agree that it's stable enough for that - and it will never get that stability without falling into a regulated state."

I think it will be regulated and that won't cause it to be any less useful.

Quote :

"One has already been solved by Paypal for a lot of sites. Click "Pay by paypal" enter u/p, confirm payment account and shipping address, done. Exactly what your Bitpay thing does, I'd suspect."

You need a Paypal account, but you would not need a Bitpay account. It's that confirm payment account I'm arguing is a pain in the ass. That step becomes a QR code or wallet address you send bitcoins. You don't need a billing address and as I've said 100 times before you don't have to worry about the merchant leaking your information. There are other risks, of course but I think the risks for an individual are less.

I'll end with a story. I think a lower friction way of taking payments is needed because it lets people from other countries create companies and compete with less red tape. If you want checks on who gets to start businesses and want Paypal to be the gatekeeper that's fine, but it's a world I have nightmares about.

Disclaimer: I've been anti Paypal and had an account locked 7-8 years ago.

I actually interviewed this guy about 2 years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5191142

Quote :

"I'm the creator of turn.js (http://www.turnjs.com), a javascript library for books and magazines. I released a commercial version in July 2012 and six month later I made $200K. I don’t know how, but I made it. PayPal has closed my account because I don’t have a social security number. It seems like I don’t qualify for one because I’m just “an international student” from Venezuela."

12/21/2013 7:03:50 PM

kiljadn wins this thread

here's another link to throw in: http://www.businessinsider.com/former-twitter-engineer-blasts-bitcoin-2013-12

12/22/2013 12:32:41 AM

Quote :

"Bitcoin is not meant to be a currency replacement, but a peer to peer payment replacement. "

I wouldn't have a problem with it if that's what it was, it's that it functions as an actual currency. I don't mind having some money in an account linked to a paypal account. If paypal suddenly disappears or everyone stops using it, I have my money in an insured account that costs nothing to insure. If bitcoin becomes outdated as all software does, I've got to be the first in line on that bank run to get my money back. In fact, it's even worse than a bank run because at least the bank has some amount of money if there is no new money coming in, with bitcoin, if no one is buying, I'm not getting my money back. It feels almost like having my money in a tech stock. If their product starts to get stale or has a better replacement, everyone could jump ship and I could lose my ass. Software platforms and services can come and go in less than decades. Look at blackberry, myspace, aol, etc. Bitcoin already has a whole army of competitors, how long before one of them becomes king of the hill?

12/22/2013 12:33:58 AM

Btc is the myspace of crypto currencies.

It's laying the groundwork for one that might work.

12/22/2013 1:06:28 AM

Quote :

"Bitcoin already has a whole army of competitors, how long before one of them becomes king of the hill?"

If Facebook were just MySpace with different colors do you think it would have taken off? That's what the current competitors are. Some change the hash algorithm to true crypt or modify the max number of coins but they are essentially the same thing.

12/22/2013 2:05:26 AM

Quote :

"it's that it functions as an actual currency"

I thought it actually functioned as a speculative asset

12/22/2013 3:02:44 AM

Quote :

"If Facebook were just MySpace with different colors do you think it would have taken off? That's what the current competitors are. Some change the hash algorithm to true crypt or modify the max number of coins but they are essentially the same thing."

I 100% believe that. That's something a currency system and a social network have in common, your product's value depends solely on how many people use it. Most of the people who switched from myspace to facebook switched because everyone was on facebook. They just need a way to see what their friends were doing and message them, something that could just as well be accomplished with aol instant messenger. But even with that aside, software like this has a very small lifespan, something else is going to come out that's better, it's inevitable.

Quote :

"I thought it actually functioned as a speculative asset"

True, I guess what I meant is that in order to use it as a payment system it has to work as a currency, as an aside, using a commodity as a currency comes with it's own problems we discussed earlier.

12/22/2013 9:43:31 AM

Quote :

"I am 100% positive the bottom will fall out of this market soon. Regulators are already peering at it from on high with their beady little eyes."

the end is nigh! kiljadn knew it all along.

12/22/2013 11:12:55 AM

I thought people switches to Facebook because of animated gifs.

Just like they are switching away from Facebook because of security, privacy, and ads.

12/22/2013 12:55:12 PM

Quote :

"It's not that much work to make some malware that scans a persons computer and steals their bitcoins, and it hits a ton of small targets."

Thank goodness there's not any malware out there capturing credit card numbers and banking info as they are entered in on people's computers!

12/22/2013 1:38:48 PM

something relevant for you guys

http://www.policymic.com/articles/77293/even-china-can-t-stop-bitcoin-from-getting-big-here-s-why

12/22/2013 8:19:58 PM

This might be a stupid question as I know next to nothing about bitcoins, but are there any physical bitcoins you can put in your pocket? (i know the bitcoin is a digital currency... but are there any bitcoin-standard backed coins or bills?)

12/22/2013 8:46:13 PM

you can make a paper backup of your wallet.dat file

12/22/2013 9:50:44 PM